 Review by Solitude 
UPDATED: 84 days ago
member for 9.5 years, 778 visits, last login: 69 days ago
 Yorktown Heights,Westchester,NY
 $70 per month
 "speed, reliability, competitive price"
 "The news service is horrible, it seems they deliberately make it hard for you to use their email/webhosting"
 "Triple Play deal makes it worth it"
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Value for money:
(ratings above consensus)
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WARNING ON MONTHLY COST: I have no idea what I pay monthly for OOL, since my old man pays the cablevision bill. We have the triple play, and he doesn't ask me for any money toward it, so I'm pretty sure just having triple play makes it cheaper.
/BEGIN REVIEW AUGUST 2004:
I waited years for OOL and finally got it about 2 and a half years ago. I was undoubtably the first person in my area to start using OOL because I had my modem connected to a coaxial cable for months, and when it finally synced I was never so happy. I signed up immediately and the first few months the speeds were blazing fast, around 9.3 mbps. Now it's about 6 mbps, even though everyone in my area has it by now, considering OOL is owned by cablevision and they advertise OOL for free. I'm just sick of seeing OOL commercials. I don't think it'll be dropping much lower than that.
The two major things that matter most, speed and reliabililty, is exactly what OOL has. They deliver, and for a very competitive price.
They're support isn't the greatest but who cares? 6mbps down and 1mbps up outweighs all that
Bottom line, OOL is the best ISP you're gonna find practically anywhere.
/END REVIEW AUGUST 2004
/BEGIN REVIEW NOVEMBER 2007:
I've had OOL for 5.5 years now and its been over three years since my last review so I suppose I'm due for a review.
In the 5 1/2 years I've had Optimum Online I don't think there's been one single outage. The connection is rock-solid stable. The speeds are always fast, even during prime times. Their BOOST service is well worth the additional cost for a power user such as myself.
The few times I've had to call them the wait times were fine and the customer service was adequate.
I went to an out of state school for college and was able to cancel service (since I'm the only person who uses internet in my home) with no problems, no hassle, no fees. When I returned home I simply went to the OOL office in my town and got another modem and started back up again.
They are supposedly currently in the beta-testing stage for their future service, "OOL ULTRA", which is a 50mbit symmetric connection. Although my speeds are great now, I wouldn't mind a 50 mbit upload, and would pay more if the price is reasonable for it.
If you like usenet, don't plan on using OOL's server if you like any binary newsgroups. Their retention time is horrible, you can only have two simultaneous connections, and the full post is hardly ever there.
I hate being a fanboy of any company because ultimately the only thing they're out for is your money, but OOL deserves the praise it gets.
UPDATE NOVEMBER 21, 2007: It appers OOL has stopped capping users regardless of their tier of service around late 2006 or 2007
The screenshot is an email I received from OOL in February 2003 telling me their service was available. I thought it was lol because I had had OOL months before their website said it was available and even months before the email. Also, I thought the woman in the picture was a retarded attempt at advertising.
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Since Optimum Online and Verizon FIOS are the only options for someone who wants high speed internet in my area (Westchester County, NY), and both companies are competing for who gets our money, I decided to post a side-by-side comparison of the two companies services and pricing tables. I think it's clear OOL is the winner, because I'm simply not willing to pay ~$100 for a 50mbit connection, unless (*MAYBE*) it was guaranteed, AND had AT LEAST a 10mbit upload also. Check it out here: »www.paulspiteri.com/solitude/ool···2007.jpg
/END REVIEW NOVEMBER 2007:
/BEGIN REVIEW AUGUST 2009:
My family has the triple play deal so I think OOL becomes a reasonable deal with all 3 services.
About four months ago OOL released their latest speed tier, ULTRA, with 100Mbps down and 15Mbps up. However, this line also involves a ridiculous $300 activation fee, which many people are avoiding because of this reason.
This past weekend there was about a 5 hour outage in the Westchester area. Other then this I can't recall any serious outages in the last year or so. I have been using OOL for almost eight years now.
I'm still on the BOOST tier (30/5) and I find that speeds do sometimes decrease during peak hours, to around 15-20 Mbps, but I do get the full 30mbps during peak hours a lot too. During off peak hours I do receive the 30 Mbps always.
I would like to upgrade to the ULTRA tier even though I don't need it, and I certainly won't be upgrading while they keep the ridiculous $300 activation fee.
Just looked and saw Verizon FIOS has a 50/20 plan for $95/monthly, which doesn't really compete with Ultra's 100/15.
In summary, I am still happy with OOL BOOST and find their service reliable and competitive. If they start sucking and there are outages or slower speeds I will update this post.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Optimum WiFi is pretty awesome. They have free WiFi in many populated areas. To use it you need to know your OOL username and password.
/END REVIEW AUGUST 2009
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hey there
|  lower rates
 want to get a better rate,,, yes, all the broadcasters rates are going up in 08, but only by a few $$ .. with Comcast looking at cablevision, Verizon is trying to capture many customers with great offers and locked in rates, cable is under pressure loosing 500+ customers a day to Verizon, the only way they can keep their customers is through the disconect /retention department,,, usually they can only offer a 6month promotion, BUT,, if you call or schedule a installation with Verizon,, have a work order number... "" you call that department with cable,, tell them you want to disconect, tell them you are going to Verizon,, and give them the order # from Verizon-FIOS of all 3 services.. they then can offer you a 1yr. ( NEW ) promotion,, or in some areas out in LI, a 2yr is available..
want the lower rates before they go up- call today, get the work order number from FIOS - on ALL 3 services,, and they can make the offer, or else they can not do it..
   - the pepople who work there are under a lot of pressure, so much pressure, they keep having high turn over every month, due to the large amoutn of disconections,, look in the paper, every week for the past 6 months, they are allway hiring,, why is that,, they don't want to keep employees, it's cheeper for them to get rid of them and hire new for less,,, they will do what ever it takes to get rid of an employee after 6 months in that department, I guess right now - they are only focused on "trying" to keep customers, rather their employees... | |
| dhstylez
join:2009-10-14
Montvale, NJ
| OOL (former FIOS customer) As much as I hate how inconsistent the OOL service is in my area (Northern NJ), I am pretty impressed by the retention of their binary news server. Currently pulling a file that's listed as 281 days old and well I just started the download but let's see if it works out.
That aside, every 1.5 months or so, I get pretty fed up with their service to the point where I want to call in and cancel. Last time I asked when my contract was up (have a few more months to go). Switched from FIOS (think i had 20/5, or something, special deal from way way back?) a while ago because the OOL Triple Play was cheaper than the FIOS service. But with the inconsistent speeds, and sometimes random outages (short 2 min outages every 20 mins for 4 hours, or longer 3 hour outages) gets annoying.
The next 'bad' thing is how horribly slow changing channels is on their units. I used to fly through TV-guide with FIOS and change channels like rapid-fire. But now there's a noticable lag inbetween channel changes and channel # inputs.
The speed is relatively fast though. Can download around 2.2 mB/s roughly 17.6mbits/s, which is good I guess, but I"m on boost so it should be slightly higher but don't really care that much at the time being.
My 2c.
P.S. But i'd switch back for reliability if given the option. Free news service is nice though. | |
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